LIVORNO. Ten people arrested for gangmastering. The Carabinieri of the provincial command of Livorno are executing a precautionary custody order in prison, issued by the investigating judge of the court, against ten people of Pakistani nationality seriously suspected, in various capacities and in collaboration with each other, of the crime of “illicit intermediation and exploitation of labor”.
The investigation called “Barefoot Feet”, coordinated by the prosecutor’s office and conducted by the Piombino Company’s operational and radio mobile unit with the support of the Carabinieri labor inspectorate unit, «has made it possible to reconstruct the illicit use of labor carried out by six owners of individual companies operating in the agricultural sector, who also making use of other people for the recruitment, daily transport and control of workers, took advantage of their state of need and employed 67 citizens of Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationality hosted in the extraordinary reception center “Le Caravelle” of Piombino, for the harvesting of vegetables or olives, as well as cleaning vineyards on land in the provinces of Livorno and Grosseto».
In particular, the indices of exploitation of non-EU citizens employed were ascertained, noting the absence of a regular employment contract, a repeated violation of the regulations relating to working hours (with peaks of ten hours per day, without the expected breaks) and to the economic treatment (with fees always well below the 10.56 euros envisaged by the contract. In one case even equal to 0.97 euros per hour), with systematic violation of the rules on safety and hygiene. During the operation, a preventive seizure decree was also executed for 45,000 euros as profit ascertained by INPS following the failure to pay social security and insurance contributions for illegally employed workers.
